Rohrabacher to Kerry: Clear Policy Won Cold War, Not Ease of Fight

California Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher told Secretary of State John Kerry that he is overplaying the complexity of the struggle against Islamist extremism in asserting that the Cold War was, in comparison, a much more straightforward affair, The Washington Times reported.

Kerry told members of the House Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday that the post-Arab Spring Middle East — and the religious extremism that has burst forth in its wake — is a far more difficult challenge for policymakers than the Cold War.

He said that the World War II generation put the U.S. on "a course to win the battle against tyranny, dictatorship and to win the battle for democracy and human rights."

He went on to assert that the bipolar U.S.-Soviet rivalry embodied in the Cold War was "simple" and "straightforward" compared to "dealing country to country, and with tribes, with culture, with a lot of old history."

Rohrabacher said that the difference was not one of complexity but of clarity of purpose. The greatest generation knew how to set priorities.

He summed up President Ronald Reagan's Cold War approach to the Soviet Union by saying it was: "'we win, they lose.'" Reagan knew, said Rohrabacher, "his number one goal, and by the end of his administration, we had eliminated the Cold War without a direct confrontation," according to the Times.

The lawmaker said it was essential to identify radical Islam as American's primary enemy.

"I know our president has a little bit of difficulty saying those words together," said Rohrabacher "but I have no problem saying it."

Some conservatives have argued that the administration places too much emphasis on complexities in the international arena, making it hard to clearly define strategic objectives, the Times reported.

Saying that he didn't want to overdraw any comparison to the past, Kerry argued that we are living in a massively transformational era in which young Muslims are the overwhelming majority in many countries.

"If they live in a place where there's bad governance, or corruption, or tyranny, in this world where everybody knows how to be in touch with everybody else all the time, you have a clash of aspirations, a clash of possibilities and opportunities," he said.

"That certainly was the beginning of the Arab Spring, which is now being infused with a sectarianism and confusions of religious overtones and other things that make it much more complicated than anything that has proceeded this," the Times reported.

California Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher told Secretary of State John Kerry that the real difference between the Cold War and today's fight against Islamic extremism is not one of complexity but, rather, of clarity of purpose.